The open source Ruby on Rails community is gearing up for their next major release.

This week Rails 3.1 was released as a release candidate, debuting new features for streaming, JavaScript integration and security. Rails 3.1 is the first major update to Rails since the 3.0 release in summer of 2010.

"There is some very important stuff in Rails 3.1," Nic Williams, VP of technology at Engine Yard told InternetNews.com.

Williams noted that the new asset pipeline is a key feature. He explained that the asset pipeline makes JavaScript a first-class citizen on Rails.

"Treating JavaScript as a first-class element -- rather than having it off in a public folder -- represents an important improvement," Williams said. "While Ruby is my preferred language, if you're going to be writing JavaScript you want to treat it sensibly."